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[Drahkar]

Problem
I'm getting very low framerate, stutter and unresponsive mouse movement/clicking when I play starsector on my gaming laptop.
The framerate never seems to go above the low 50s and will often dip in the 20s and even down to 17 at some point. This includes in the campaign map aswell as inside a battle with only 3 frigates present.

Info
-No mods of any kind for this game are or were ever installed on this computer.
-Game freshly installed multiple times today.
-No intensive applications running in the background.
-Recent videocard drivers (the ones that came out for Fallout 4, which runs very well on this same laptop).
-In battles, the game mouse controls feel as if I had about 20 FPS and vsync on, even when the FPS counter shows 40-55 and vsync is forced off in the Nvidia control panel.
-I made sure that the Nvidia Control Panel settings are for the game to run on the GTX980.

Specs
Windows 8.1 64-bit
GTX 980M
Intel i7-4710HQ @ 2.5GHz
8GB RAM

[Alex]

Hmm.

-I made sure that the Nvidia Control Panel settings are for the game to run on the GTX980.

Can you make sure to also set:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\jre\bin\java.exe
To run on the GTX980? That might resolve the issue.

A reboot could also be worth a shot, if you haven't tried it.

[Drahkar]

I've done both of those things.

An oddity I noticed : if I open fraps and use it to get an FPS counter, my FPS dips to 20 or so and the game tends to crash.

I just tried alternating between fullscreen and borderless but it seems to make no difference.

I'm curious why the game would struggle to render more than 40ish FPS even on the main menu. I didn't find any config files for the games and the ingame options are pretty barebones when it comes to graphics and such, so I'm not sure if there's any sort of framerate limit in any part of the game.

[Alex]

There are some settings in :
C:\Program Files (x86)\Fractal Softworks\Starsector\starsector-core\data\config\settings.json.
In particular, a vsync and an fps one (which is only used if vsync is off).

I'm not sure what's going on; this is definitely not normal - as you say, there's no reason why it should struggle like that.

It's possible that it's still somehow not running on the GTX. Another possibility is that it *is* running on the GTX, and the NVIDIA drivers are causing a problem, despite being recent. That wouldn't be the first time recent drivers still had issues. To rule that out, can you try running it on your integrated card? It's probably good enough to handle the game quite well, anyway.

[Drahkar]

I was looking around for solutions or similar problems and ended up trying the game in 1600x1050 (instead of my native 1920x1080).

Just on the main menu, at 1920x1080 I get about 40 FPS and it says Idle:90%
At 1600x1050, I get exactly 60 FPS and it says Idle:90%

Using Sysinternals Process Explorer to look at GPU usage, the usage is at around 50% at 1920x1080 and usage is at around 15% at 1600x1050.

I'm thoroughly confused.

I'll try using the integrated graphics and see what happens then.

[Alex]

At 1600x1050, I get exactly 60 FPS and it says Idle:90%

Yeah - that's about what I'd expect as "reasonable".

Using Sysinternals Process Explorer to look at GPU usage, the usage is at around 50% at 1920x1080

... and that's totally not.

I'm thoroughly confused.

Likewise. Starting to look like a driver issue, tbh.

[Drahkar]

Now that I've turned vsync off in the config file, at 1920x1050 I still get 40 FPS on the main menu but now it says Idle:0%

Edit : but in battles it still says Idle:90%. No idea what that means.

[Alex]

Now that I've turned vsync off in the config file, at 1920x1050 I still get 40 FPS on the main menu but now it says Idle:0%

Edit : but in battles it still says Idle:90%. No idea what that means.

"Idle" is how much time it spends either sleeping or waiting for vsync. 0% idle means it's working the entire time to push out the frames. 90% idle means it spends 90% of the time doing nothing. If the framerate is below 60 and idle is high, that's really weird.

Might be worth looking your 3D settings in the NVIDIA control panel... hm. I'd still suggest trying the integrated card first, though, if that just works then it gets around the problem entirely.

[Drahkar]

Well we just made progress, I have now determined that computers are made by sorcerers and I'm considering having an exorcist take a look at mine...

Using the integrated graphics gives me 60 FPS at 1920x1080. The "Idle" display varies a lot though (going down to 20s and 30s in a smallish or medium battle) so the only problem I can see with this solution is that it will probably dip below 60 in large battles. This is strange, and doesn't really solve the mystery, but at least it's a temporary fix.

Edit : I changed the config file's fps settings to 120 to see how the integrated graphics card would handle it and it also runs 120 FPS pretty easily in a medium size battle (7-10 small ships).

[Alex]

Well we just made progress, I have now determined that computers are made by sorcerers and I'm considering having an exorcist take a look at mine...

Please give me their contact info if it helps.

Using the integrated graphics gives me 60 FPS at 1920x1080. The "Idle" display varies a lot though (going down to 20s and 30s in a smallish or medium battle) so the only problem I can see with this solution is that it will probably dip below 60 in large battles. This is strange, and doesn't really solve the mystery, but at least it's a temporary fix.

I guess it's either that or 1600x1050 with the GTX, right? Glad there's some sort of work around, but still, ugh. Been more issues than usual with NVIDIA performance recently, hope they improve their drivers. Thanks for you patience!

[Drahkar]

Thanks for the help!

If I ever manage to make it run as expected on my GTX980 I'll make a post here to update the situation. In the meanwhile, 120 FPS on my integrated card sounds fine for me. 

[MechaLenin]

Having exactly same issue. Lenovo y50-70 laptop with GTX 960. Framerate looks like it's using integrated graphics instead of nvidia card, but it's forced on in control panel. I'm not having issues with any other game.

[MechaLenin]

So, yeah...
Swichted to integrated graphics and I'm getting MUCH better FPS. Interestingly enough, I'm running on same OS (Win 8.1), CPU and nvidia 9xx card as OP.